The Peterson Institute hosted its twentieth semiannual Global Economic Prospects program September 9, 2011. Senior Fellow Michael Mussa projected the world economy for the rest of 2011 and 2012. PIIE's new Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow Carmen M. Reinhart discussed the debt and deficit profiles facing the United States and their implications for the economic outlook. Senior Fellow Simon Johnson analyzed recent developments in the euro area both for the region itself and for the rest of the world.

Michael Mussa was chief economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) during 1991—2001 before joining the Institute and was previously a member of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. Carmen M. Reinhart is the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Institute and has written widely on debt and deficits, most famously (with Kenneth Rogoff) This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Simon Johnson has been a senior fellow at the Institute since late 2008, after serving as chief economist at the IMF, and is also the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT's Sloan School of Management.